Ill-Fated: A Dark Journey (Dark Fates #1)

Prologue

The cold seeps through the skin and pierces through the numbness that I have settled into from this strange sleep I slipped into. And the first inhale is so shaky that it barely helps against the panic that seems to be settling in. I open my eyes too fast and the glare of the light after the dark hurts too much to even try to see. I close my eyes, take a deeper – yet still shaky – breath and try again.

The first thing that catches my attention is the boring empty pale yellow coloured wall in front of me. For some reason, I'm very tempted to try to fill that blank spot. As I look around for rearranging the place, I observe the things around me that I didn't notice. There are books on a bookshelf, a wooden closet with one door half open, a table with some paper and pen on it along with a chair that's halfway turned to me. Was I sitting there? Or was someone else there? When was I there?

At this thought, memories come rushing in and my knees buckle as I jump out of the bed quickly, a reminder that every immersion tires me out physically. I can't help but let out small groans of the pain as muscles spasm all over my body due to this last one. I was so close... I groan again as the pain of the fall kicks in as well but the knowledge that all of this vision will be forgotten within moments pushes me to desperately try to get to the pen and the paper. I crawl even as the sting of the blood rushing back through passages blocked during spasms try to make me pause even for just a moment... a moment I can't afford.

"I... I fired the spell... the spell of... of ... I can't remember! I'm already forgetting things here." I mumble, trying to keep it in the memory long enough to jot things down. But the memories of dreams are tricky, anticipating my every attempt and slipping through my fingers. "Anyway, it was fired at ... him. Him? Who's him? No, no, no, NO!" I scream as I give up, letting the last memories of the dream fade away and the desperation and the grief of the dream turn into one of the present. "It was the end. I know that. I know it was the end of all this. Why did I wake up now?"

And the realization is like lightning striking so close to the skin that the hairs are singed. I turn back to the bed, giving up any sort of attempt to write out the dream I just had, and try to dream further. Perhaps if I see how it goes on from that point, I would know how things play out next in the forgotten dream. I lie down in the bed, trying to ignore the desire to interfere in the timeline and so all I do is repeat the words of the most powerful being to ever exist in my head to stop myself from doing something he warned me against a long time ago.

The desire subsides after a long struggle and I try to drift back to the dream again. But, unlike every other time so far, the dream world doesn't take me. I move around on the bed, shifting positions to be more comfortable and fall asleep, but nothing helps. Giving up, I decide to just lie down on the comfortable bed until I fall asleep. The mind is a difficult thing to silence but soon it cannot focus on anything either. The body starts to get sluggish and I struggle to not break this immersion. It wasn't meant to be, though.

The grandfather clock tolls and my body slips away from sleep's grasp that I'm not even aware my eyes are actually open and staring blankly at the dull yellow roof for the first few tolls. But I notice when sparks of red catch my attention from the corner of my eye. To my horror, two terrifying realizations strike in harmony. One is that my notes... my precious notes about my past visions... are disappearing – as if they're being erased from existence. The other is that my body is still sluggish from almost falling asleep and just wants to sleep. I force myself to wake up and to move towards the pages even as I wonder what's happening. The speed at which the notes disappear is increasing at some unbelievable rate and I just randomly grab a piece of note that's starting to disappear. It solidifies once I pick it up but at the same instant, every other paper disappears from in front of me. The future... it's all gone!